Boston College 'to return Troubles tapes'

A US college which is storing an oral history of the North's Troubles - part of which was relied upon by police to quiz Gerry Adams about a notorious IRA murder - has said it is willing to hand interviews back to former paramilitaries who took part.

Last year the PSNI won a legal battle to force Boston College to hand over sections of the archive that related to the murder of Belfast mother-of-10 Jean McConville.

After his release from custody without charge following four days of questioning, Mr Adams claimed that most of the evidence detectives presented to him was based on allegations levelled by interviewees who had given accounts to the oral project.

Former IRA members Brendan Hughes and Dolours Price, both now dead, claimed in the tapes that Mr Adams had a role in ordering the murder of Mrs McConville in 1972.

Prosecutors in Northern Ireland have been asked to assess a police file on Mr Adams to decide if any charges will ultimately be brought against the Sinn Féin president. Mr Adams, 65, vehemently denies any involvement in the crime or that he was ever a member of the IRA.

The 40-plus participants in the oral project had been assured that their accounts would not be made public until their deaths, but that undertaking was undermined by the US court ruling.

Of more than 80 interviews contained in the archive, the court decision saw police obtain sections of 11 tapes.

Amid concerns about the status of the remaining interviews, the college has now indicated its willingness to hand back the tapes to those who were interviewed.

College spokesman Jack Dunn said: “Obviously we’d have to verify that they were the individuals that took part in the process.”

Mr Dunn told the BBC: “If they wanted those documents returned, we’d be prepared to return those documents.”

The men behind the project – journalist Ed Moloney and former IRA member turned writer and researcher Anthony McIntyre – have criticised the college for not robustly challenging the PSNI court bid.

Mr Dunn rejected that claim.

“Any suggestion that we did not fight hard enough is completely specious,” he said.

Last night, Mr Adams again criticised his arrest and the quality of evidence presented to him by detectives.

“The sham that I was put through in terms of the total failure of the Police Service of Northern Ireland to present any evidential link between me and that awful event is not the way to go forward,” he told an election rally in Belfast.

“It sends entirely the wrong signal to all of those people out there who vote for the future, who in 2014 thought we had got away from that kind of practice.”

Mrs McConville’s son, Michael, yesterday alleged that, a number of years ago, Mr Adams threatened him with a “backlash” if he released the names of those he believed were responsible for his mother’s death.

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